Blood Hearts
by James Steele
Summary: When Seras is assigned to go on several missions with a new agent, a mysterious American known simply as "Scourge". She's been studying him since he joined the Organization, and she slowly but progressively falls for him. She resists and rejects this at first, but eventually loses the ability to fight her attraction. Rated T for suggestive themes and profanity. R&R.
1. Chapter 1

"But, Master. Why must I go on this mission with him?"  
"Because you have been ordered to. We will not discuss this further."

A sigh escaped her lips and her shoulders dropped "Yes, Master."

"Now go meet with him on the helipad. There's no more time to waste."  
"Yes, Master." she rushed off toward the helipad, leaving Alucard, the Vampire King, in the hall. When she arrived at the helipad, she saw a chopper waiting, the blades spinning slow enough to not lift the chopper into the air just yet, but quick enough to convey the sense of urgency. Standing with one foot inside the vehicle and his head turned to her was a man who looked, at first glance, to be about 22. Despite the moon which sat high up in the cloudless sky, he had a pair of reflector-lensed sunglasses on. He also wore a black James Dean-style leather jacket with an unzipped grey hoody underneath it and a black t-shirt brandished with the same symbol on the helicoptor on it underneath the hoody, black jeans, and a pair of black and white shoes. On his hands, he wore black gloves with skeletal hands printed on them. His face had the appearence of one who had seen much of the world. Perhaps even a little too much. He didn't look tramautized, and his mental sharpness proved he wasn't, but more like he knew too much of how the world worked. He was, overall, handsome, with a strong jaw, short but messy hair, and light stubble. She stopped appraising him and turned her thoughts back to the mission. A pair of Vampires and a small army of Ghouls, terrorizing a remote town. Nothing unusual, or particularly difficult. Which made her wonder why she was going with _him_ and not with Alucard.

"Well, it's about time you showed up."

"Oh, shut up. You Americans are so impatient."

"At least we have a sense of time."

He stepped the rest of the way into the helicopter and sat down in one of the passenger seats. She followed and sat in the one opposite him.

"So, Miss Victoria, any particular plan we should employ?"

"I told you not to call me that. I hate being called 'Miss Victoria'."

"Fine, fine. So, Seras, any particular plan we should employ?"

"Nothing concrete, as of yet. "  
"Sounds like code for 'Guns Blazing' to me."

"So does everything else."

"Lemme guess, 'typical American'."

The pilot closed the open door and stepped into the cockpit and looked back at them.

"You're ready to go, then?"

"As ready as ever, Nigel."

"Right, Miss Victoria. I'll take 'er up."

The blades spun faster and the chopper began to rise from the pad and into the near pitch-black sky.

"So, how come he can call you Miss Victoria?"

"Because _him_, I trust."

"You wound me with your cruel words."

Seras huffed and turned her face away from him, and his sarcasm, something he seemed to have too much of. She crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes, finding the darkness under her eyelids comforting. Her own private thinking place. She thought about the man next to her. He was a new agent, and had traveled all the way from America to be a part of the organization. He was a vampire, this much was unmistakable. She had seen him without the glasses, and his eyes were almost as red as Alucard's. Just a tad lighter in shade. As far as she knew, nobody knew his real name. Nobody but Sir Integra, in any case. He had been going by 'Scourge' since day one. He was also clearly not a natural born Vampire. the little scars on the knuckles of his right hand and the one through his left eyebrow made that clear. She had seen him in the training room, using a pair of knives and a pair of pistols, and he had done very well. She had actually been impressed with the mysterious man's skill. Not to mention he wasn't hard on the eyes, either...

Seras shook her head at the last thought, letting it trail off into her subconscious. She would not allow those thoughts to creep into her head and sink their claws into her mind. After a while of sitting in the darkness she'd made for herself when she closed her eyes, she fell asleep. It was a dreamless sleep.

Scourge looked over to the girl in the seat next to him. She had gotten still and quiet. He could tell by the slow pattern of her breathing that she'd fallen asleep, and he sighed to himself. She looked too young to be in this kind of work. He knew a limited amount about her, but he knew she had been turned after Alucard shot her to kill a Vampire in a small town. She would've bled to death if he hadn't turned her. She'd had a deal of trouble...adjusting...to her new life. From what he'd heard, she hated drinking blood, and more often than not, she didn't drink any at all. He'd had trouble at first, too, but he'd quickly remembered the rule of survival. He had managed to develop his own synthetic substitute, and fed from that most times, rather than human or animal blood. She wasn't that bad with a rifle, he'd noticed that much. But then, it was difficult not to notice her skill with a rifle after she had shot a hole through the center of the Ace of Spades without a scope from 45 yards away. He had wanted to test her, to see her skill for himself. Something he had, as far as he was concerned, succesfully done. He leaned his head back, into the seat and closed his eyes. It was going to be a long night, so he'd need what little rest he could obtain on the trip.


	2. Chapter 2

When she opened her eyes and roused herself from sleep, Seras had to remember where she was. But once she did, she pushed all thoughts of sleep and fatigue from her head. She needed to be focused. Although the mission wasn't wouldn't be _too _dangerous, she still needed her wits about her. She looked over to Scourge, who was wide awake and checking the magazines in his Colt Double Eagle pistols. Turning his eyes to her, he gave a sarcastic smile, causing his fangs to gleam in the dim red light inside the helicopter. She then saw he now had a parachute pack strapped onto his back. She had no way of knowing when he had put it on, but she had a bad feeling about why he was wearing it.

"Well, look who decided to come out of her coma and re-join us."

"Oh, be quiet. Why didn't you wake me?"

"I tried."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. No luck."

"What did you try?"

"Everything short of shooting the door."

"Oh. Well then."

"You sleep like someone put a Blessed Blade through your heart."

"I do not."

"You do."

The chopper began its descent and Scourge pushed a loaded clip into each pistol and put them in the shoulder holsters concealed under his jacket. Both knives hung from his belt, adjacent to each other. He smirked at her and spoke again.

"We'll finish our conversation later, eh?"

Before her answer could leave her lips, Scourge smirked and patted his knees in a rhythm he'd most likely made up. It was a habit of his, he did whenever he was anticipating something, or if he was bored. There were several other things he did from boredom, but that was the most common habit. Seras pulled her rifle case out from under the seat and opened it, taking out the parts of her rifle and assembling them in their proper order. Carefully but quickly. One tiny mistake, and it would fall apart in her hands. Scourge stood up and walked to the chopper door, pulling it open and peering out at the ground below.

"Hey, Nigel."

"Yeah?"

"Just bring her down to a point where I won't break my legs and I'll hop out."

"You sure about that?"

"One hundred percent."

"Well alright. Another twenty feet oughta be good."

"I'll be waiting with bated breath."

When he mentioned jumping from the chopper before it landed, Seras swore her heart had skipped a beat. It happened every time he mentioned doing something like that, and he most often followed through on his word. She had been right to have a bad feeling about that parachute. It made her nervous, to say the least. If something were to happen...

No. She pushed the thoughts from her head again, shaking her head and making a frustrated growling noise to herself, scowling at her own foolishness. 'You do not care for him. You do not care for him. You do not care for him.' She said these words over and over and over in her head, waiting for him to follow through on his routine foolishness.

After a few more minutes the chopper had lowered to a safe jumping altitude and Scouge tapped his fingers on the chopper door in anticipation.

"This should be good for your jump, Scourge."

"Alright. Thanks, Nigel. See you on the ground, Miss Victoria."

She started to tell him not to call her that, but no sooner had she finished saying the word 'me', he had jumped from the helicopter. And when she saw him lunge out of the door, she dug her nails into her seat. She hoped that when the chopper landed and she had left it, she truly would see him, on his feet, unharmed, on the ground.

The wind ripped at his face like invisible claws, claws trying to peel the flesh from the muscle and bone underneath. He smiled to himself and pressed his arms against his sides, then pulled his legs close to another, speeding up his descent. He loved moments like this. The adrenaline surge, the sense of potential danger if the chute didn't deploy. There was nothing better than a good adrenaline rush. Not as far as he was concerned. His glasses fell away from his eyes and the cord he had threaded through the 'stems', as he liked to call them, saved them from sharing his plummet to the ground. Instead, they fell to hang from his neck. 'Cord's justifying itself already.' he thought to himself before spreading his limbs out to slow himself, before pulling the parachute cord and being jerked upward by the sudden slowing force. He continued to smile to himself as he lowered to the ground. He looked up and to his left, seeing the chopper still making its descent.

"Looks like I'm gonna beat the chopper. Good. Wouldn't want Seras to have _all_ the ghoul-slaying fun."

Once he reached the ground he dropped down to one knee for a brief instant before unhooking the chute from himself and letting it drop into the dirt. He stood up and looked around, before once more looking up and seeing the helicopter, getting close to the ground.

"Guess I'm going for a run."

His train of thought was interrupted by a groaning sound coming from behind him. He again smiled to himself and turned around to face the group of Ghouls.

"I was wonderin' when you fellas would come out to play. Well, let's get to it, then."

He reached into his jacket and pulled his pistols from their holsters, then held them at his sides.

"Looks like Miss Victoria's gonna have to wait."

He flicked the safety switch on both pistols to 'Off' and ran towards the Ghouls, already with pistols raised and firing.

After what felt like an eternity, the helicopter had finally lowered to the ground. Seras grabbed her rifle and almost tripped over herself rushing out of the door. She prayed Nigel hadn't seen. She stuck her head back inside and told him the details for extraction.

"Green smoke, Nigel. That's the sign that we're done."

"Got it, Miss Victoria."

She pulled her head back outside the vehicle and looked around as the helicopter began to rise again.

"Where the hell is he? Did we beat him to ground?"

She heard gunshots and her eyes widened almost immediately.

"Oh, no. He's already found trouble."

Scourge had cut a nice path in the group, and had already needed to reload twice, once for each pistol. His next clip was in his mouth, between his teeth. He shot a few more down and released the now empty clip from the pistol in his left hand. He raised the other and began to fire, remembering the golden rule for Ghouls. 'One shot to the head, they won't get up again.' That, and 'No mercy.' He leveled the pistol with the clip in his mouth and brought the pistol down onto the end of the clip far enough to release it from his teeth and push it the rest of the way in with the side of his head. He shot down the rest of the group and took a minute to survey the newly made mass-grave site.

"They never have enough fight in 'em."

He hard rustling and snapping in the brush nearby and fired a shot in the sound's direction.

"Hey! Watch it!"

"Seras?"

"Yes, you damned idiot! Don't shoot at me!"

"Didn't know it _was_ you. Besides, you're fine. Relax."

She came the rest of the way out of the brush and glared daggers at him.

"Relax? Relax!?"

"That's what I said."

"You almost shot me!"

"_Almost."_

"Tch."

She looked away from him, playing it off as merely surveying the area.

"I see you dealt with the Ghouls."

"No way in hell that's all of them."

"I know. But it's likely a good chunk."

"Maybe."

Another volley of groaning sounded nearby and they both turned to the second group of Ghouls.

"Ring the bell. Round two. Think your rifle can keep up with my pistols?"

"It can surpass your pistols."

"We'll see."

The duo began firing at the Ghouls, both counting their kills in their heads, competing with each other. When the crowd had been cut down completely, and the two stood with their barrels still smoking, Scourge turned to Seras with his iconic smirk plastered on his face.

"19."

She hesitated, considered lying, and then dropped her shoulders with a sigh.

"12."

"It will surpass my pistols, huh?"

"Oh, be quiet."


End file.
